Purcell: Birds offer hated soundtrack to tax prep

I hate birds when they chirp. It's the government's fault.

I am sitting by an open door, with a nice spring breeze, the sun shining, the birds chirping. But I cannot enjoy this beautiful day.

I am surrounded by a sea of receipts, you see - receipts of every kind. I keep every receipt for every transaction that I make all year long because my government says I must.

I have spent the past few days organizing the massive pile of paper. I must organize each receipt into its appropriate folder and then tally those receipts with great precision - not easy for an English major - into numbers that my CPA can then transform into a long return, which we send to the government along with a big fat check.

My CPA has the more difficult job. He must keep up with the massive tax code so he can determine what I can and cannot deduct and how I must go about it. Considering the tax code is some 70,000 pages long, I have no idea how he does this. I suspect alcohol is involved.

I'm running way behind this year. And so, as the weather has broken and the birds have begun singing, I sit here in the middle of a sea of paper, overcome by powerlessness and wondering what the heck has happened to America.

America is supposed to be the land of the free, after all. It's supposed to be a dynamic, bureaucracy-free place where any fellow can easily start his own business - any fellow can chase his own dream, unburdened by regulations and an incredibly burdensome tax code.

Yet, as our tax code grows ever more complex, a new narrative is forming: that our country is so in debt and our spending so egregious that the only way to keep things afloat is lots more taxes.

It's maddening for a fellow drowning

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